


Interstate

by machinavellian



Category: Heavy Rain
Genre: First Time, M/M, Oral Sex, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 17:29:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15054227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machinavellian/pseuds/machinavellian
Summary: Now Norman sees that in his negligence he played himself entirely, exhaustively, and there's never been a single moment where he wasn't hopeless in the face of Ethan Mars and his enormous, bleeding, beautiful heart.





	Interstate

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Silence The Pianos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/564273) by [fugitivus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fugitivus/pseuds/fugitivus). 
  * Inspired by [To the Rescue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/786297) by [ladysisyphus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus). 
  * Inspired by [Marriott Variations](https://archiveofourown.org/works/800034) by [whitachi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitachi/pseuds/whitachi). 



Somehow he manages to convince the Bureau to stay its axe until he's had a chance to clean up the shitpile of red tape left behind in Philadelphia. Just a well-earned bit of time off, or so he's expected to believe—or, failing that, accept without incident. Nothin' to it. He's tired, right? Been through the ringer these last four months, mortal peril and press conferences, routine medical checks, vertigo, nosebleeds out of the clear blue sky, visions made of static that he wasn't gonna talk about until they started getting frightening and he'd made the fatal mistake of casually asking what was normal and what wasn't—and then the notification that the ARI beta had ended, so abrupt and so conclusive it felt like a reprisal. Good work, agent. You're tired. _Take a break._

So, despite feeling as if he's been robbed of a sense, Norman goes back to Philadelphia. The rain's long since turned to leaden snow, packed into ramparts on every curbside with the off-black remnants of microscopic industrial debris. He expects every bit of his dealings with the PD to play out just like pulling teeth, and he's right about that; he does _not_ expect his day to end with him sitting at a quaint little café table a little ways off from the field office, on a weird coffee date with Grace Mars—who introduced herself on the phone earlier in the afternoon as "Grace Mars? Shaun's mother."

_Not Ethan Mars' ex-wife, I notice. Not Ethan's anything, not anymore._

He finds the place tucked away in one of those neighborhoods that still straddles the line between eclectic and gentrified, ample square footage sacrificed to the months-disused patio out front. A small fire pops and purrs behind him, reflected faintly in the window over Grace's hunched shoulders. It's the best coffee he's had since coming out here.

"—and why _would_ he talk to me, after everything? Everything I said?" She pauses, stares at the table a while before continuing, quieter: "But we were married more than ten years. I know when something's wrong, even if he won't tell me."

Norman remembers the file because he'd gone to the trouble of learning it intimately. First kid dead two years prior, car accident. He remembers Grace's hands, slim and anxious in her lap, recalling her husband's preoccupation with the Origami murders. Whether Perry and Blake and the rest of Philly's finest chose to believe it or not, Norman sees in hindsight how it all should've made sense: the sensitive father of a sensitive child, consumed and distraught by reminders of his loss pressing in all around him. Severe and persistent depression, panic attacks, vicarious trauma, hell, _primary_ trauma, culminating in a series of dissociative fugues catalyzed by extreme emotional distress. Maybe if Blake hadn't been so busy beating the answers he wanted out of Ethan's psychiatrist he would've seen the ones that were actually there, plain as day, plain as one of Norman's "fucking textbooks."

Norman doesn't make a habit of retroactively diagnosing persons of interest. Norman's got no business diagnosing anybody at all, really, though lately that abandoned doctorate's been looking more and more appealing.

_This one got to me. Why this one? Shit, wish I knew._

He's wanted to ask. How things are, how they've been since October, since picking through his library of contacts for somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody local who can help the Mars family pick up the pieces. He's wanted to, but he hasn't.

 _Add post-traumatic stress to the list if it hasn't been already,_ he thinks into his cup, watching Grace's black reflection talk. _What are you doing, Ethan?_

Around the bitter taste in his mouth Norman replies, "Mrs.—Grace. Do you believe Ethan's a danger to himself?"

Grace's gaze is probing and pointed, demanding more than he's giving. "I don't know. He takes Shaun to his therapist religiously, but I think that's it. And every time I try to ask if he's talked to _anybody_ he just… shuts me out. And I don't know what else to do."

Her lashes flutter; she swallows, straightens, spoons a little more sugar into her latte and stirs until the decorative autumn leaf blurs into a formless amalgam of tiny beige bubbles.

"But I can see him withdrawing, and it—" She breathes. "It's scaring me. I'm scared for him. A-and it's not like I can call the police, either, not after…"

 _No kidding,_ thinks Norman.

Not for the first time, he can't help but wonder if Ethan's told anybody precisely how he got out of that station. He knows Perry doesn't know on account of the whole goddamn precinct getting shred-happy in the days immediately preceding his visit; for now, at least, the details of Ethan Mars' release seem to have been lost in the shuffle with all the other evidence of grievous misconduct.

"Could you… maybe just try to talk to him? After everything you've done for Shaun, after everything you've done for our family—I think he trusts you. More than me, anyway." She sighs. "I guess it's no surprise. I wasn't there, but you were. You're the only other person in the world who knows what he went through. Well, and I guess—that journalist? Madison Paige."

A small, tense crease forms in her brow. Something about that name bothers her, but she doesn't give him time to figure it out.

"Y'know, the last time you left town, Shaun couldn't stop talking about you for days. He must've watched that interview you did about a thousand times." All of a sudden she's smiling, far away, like she's remembering how. "I don't know if you knew that, but it's true. He thinks you're the just the greatest thing."

"He's a good kid," he says in response, because it's not like he can tell her how wrong her son is.

 

* * *

  

That evening, at the edge of the hotel bar, Norman's swiping through the migrated case docs in his phone and the need for ARI hits him so hard he almost swoons off the stool, perception flipping sideways long enough to let the glass slip from his hand. It lands upright with a loud rude bang like a gunshot.

" _Shit,_ " he hisses, waving off the bartender with one hand and using a fistful of cocktail napkins to mop up vodka splatter with the other.

_Fuck's sake. It's gone. It's gone. Deal with it._

Norman huffs in pique around a mouthful of watered-down booze and decides he's had enough; he tosses down an ample sum of cash and starts to set off toward the elevators, but… well, who's he kidding, really. He knows how heading back to his room ends. He'll try to work more, sure, and as his mind quiets with the hour there'll eventually be nothing left but to force sleep or watch, queasy, as toy tanks start to climb the wall like roaches.

So he decides to go grab a drink. A different drink, another drink, at another place. Get some air. Delay the inevitable.

It's early still, barely even dark out. He'd driven up at the tail end of an unseasonably warm spell for February, so his steps swish wetly across the slushy concrete as he walks, walks, walks a while longer until sunset turns the sky the color of used dishwater. Disquietingly sober, he ducks into the first unpretentious pub he sees.

Slouched again over a weathered bar and nursing a second cocktail, Norman stares, unmoving, at a similarly blank phone screen. An hour with Grace and his idea of Ethan's overall condition is still pretty opaque. Is this sensible? Maybe not. He's a little drunk. But the alternative, the very realistic risk that Ethan has begun to isolate himself, withdraw from the rest of the world in preparation for Christ only knows what, well... Better senseless than negligent. He presses send. It rings. It rings.

"Hello?"

Ethan answers.

Norman would be lying if he said the first couple minutes weren't just a blur of small talk. He's less conversing than keeping Ethan on the line, mining his inflection for signs, warnings, anything out of place that could be construed as a red flag.

"Well," Ethan says, after insisting that he's been just fine, "I'm glad you called, anyway. It's… nice. To hear from you."

"Yeah?" There's a beat where he finds himself hard up for a way to reply that doesn't strike him as forced, even if it really isn't forced. It's just not something he expected to hear. "Uh, Shaun, though, Shaun's good? He... still in school?"

"Um, sure," Ethan replies, dismissive almost, having found something better to worry about. "Have you—are _you_ all right, Agent Jayden?"

"Sure," Norman says, easy as lying. Around him the din of the bar has ebbed back to something more civilized, and that's less all right—since when does a guy go to a bar to hear himself think?—and the urge to fill the yawning second of silence drives him to follow up with, "jussst... enjoyin' th'weather."

Which makes no particular kind of sense, and Ethan must hear the way he doesn't _quite_ manage to avoid tripping over his own tongue, because without missing a single beat he up and lays _this_ on him: "Are you sure, because it... sounds like you've had a couple of drinks tonight."

And it's so _stern,_ drilling him for the truth like a fucking laser. It's stunning. Amazingly, he doesn't laugh.

_Goddamn it, Ethan. Tone like that, you'da made a great cop._

"All right, look, you got me." Wry, though it's not even that funny. "Look, that's not the point. Are you, uh… are you busy tonight? I gotta head back on Sunday. You oughta come down here. If you aren't. It's a... nice evening."

Ethan is silent on the line just long enough for him to suspect it's a monumentally fucking stupid thing he's just suggested, but just before he decides he oughta heave himself out a window Ethan sighs fuzzily into the receiver.

"Let me guess… Grace put you up to this?"

Sharp guy, that Ethan.

"Nope."

Another short pause. Norman can hear him trying to work out his intentions from here. It's not like he's wrong to try, either, because this entire boondoggle is not strictly what one would call _professional_. Professional got left behind about two drinks ago.

"Why, where are you?"

Because he's all out of self-preservation for one lifetime, Norman tells him.

 

* * *

 

They stumble into Ethan's condo at quarter to eleven, which might've caused a disturbance were it not Grace's weekend with Shaun. Out of habit, Ethan still skulks from the coat hook to the kitchen with a parent's guilty stealth, Norman trailing behind as a curious doppelganger, imitating for the sake of understanding. Not that it seems to matter that much; he can hear the TV murmuring a late-night monologue to the empty living room, which forces Norman to consider that Ethan himself might've been similarly compromised prior to coming out—or, just maybe, he'd left in such a hurry that otherwise reasonable human behaviors like turning off appliances just kind of... fell by the wayside. Norman then wonders just where that speculation's coming from, because something about it feels hazardously close to optimism.

Ethan cracks a beer for him like a goddamn clairvoyant; he takes it, then follows him as he crashes into the sofa with a leathery _whump._ He's just a few inches away, Ethan, right there next to him, at ease in his own domain. It's fascinating, in its own way, maybe for its novelty.

They shot the shit for a while at the bar. In the last couple of hours, Norman's learned some interesting things: turns out they attended college in the same city, at almost the same time—he as a high-strung late undergrad, Ethan a professional just beginning to distinguish himself. He'd moved out of state just after high school, leaving behind a girlfriend of about three months, then reconnected with her by dumb luck a few years later. He and Grace married young, started the family young, wound up divorcing young too. Ethan Mars, Norman judges, is a bit of a romantic: a quiet type, a homebody whose most daring act prior to four months ago was smoking a shitton of weed in the 90s. A relative introvert. Thoughtful, but fearless in his decisions. Ironclad in his convictions. Modest and perceptive. Surprisingly funny. Deadpan. Gentle. A smile that aches to look at.

Ethan brings it up first.

"Got a call from Madison a couple of weeks ago."

This comes as no surprise. She'd called Norman, too.

"Is that right. How's she?"

Norman watches, with a profiler's eyes, the controlled unfurling of Ethan's body language as he reclines against the cushions with well-contained exasperation. His stretched form slides slowly down the upholstery, powder blue sweater riding up enough to expose a dusting of hair descending below his waistband.

A profiler's eyes.

" _Madison,_ " Ethan begins halfway through a deep resigned breath, "is writing a book _all_ about it."

Norman knows. He signed the release already. No point fighting it. Parts of that story she'll never tell anyhow; she doesn't know them, he hopes, and he's not uttering a peep.

"Yeah, Ethan, look—"

"No, I know. Whatever you're going to say, I know it already. Oh, but don't worry, she promised it would be sympathetic. A way to _clear the air,_ so what have we got to worry about, right? You know, I, for one, can't wait until she gets the movie deal. Maybe a—a multi-part documentary. Can't wait. And fucking… I thought… You know, after everything, I just thought that maybe we..."

In spite of himself, Norman finds himself filing that tidbit away. Ethan sighs again, a big tired huff. "Well. It's not important, I guess. As long as I never see another goddamn reporter as long as I live, I guess it doesn't really matter what she writes."

"Well, let's hope building security's worth what you're paying."

"Oh, believe me. They are."

Ethan's kind eyes settle over him like a small rain cloud, like a weight on his neck. Norman knows when he's been caught, so he just sits and waits for Ethan to say what he's gonna say.

"Look," he says, serious. "What you did for me…"

"Ethan…"

"I haven't told _anyone._ And I never will."

It was a decision as right as it will be career-ending, if anybody ever finds out. Norman is largely unaware of how his whole expression softens at the assurance, tension he didn't know he had bleeding from the set of his shoulders. He leans closer to Ethan and gives the lip of his can a subdued tap of his own. "Thanks."

"You know, I've been watching you watch me the whole night," Ethan says, apropos of fuck-all, and makes an ambiguous gesture while Norman's busy beating back a surge of alarm.

"The… the way that you study people. Figure out how they tick. You were totally certain that I hadn't done anything, but not even I knew for sure, not… not really. That just an FBI thing?"

Norman makes an amused noise in reply—or at least he hopes it comes off that way, because what it actually is is the heart-hammering relief you feel when a speeding truck misses you by a sliver.

"Mmm, sort of, but probably not in the way you're thinking. It's useful. Lets you see things from another angle. It's why I knew you were innocent. That's not the kind of person you are."

"Is that what you're trying to figure out? What kind of a person I really am?"

"I'm not trying to profile you, Ethan," Norman says, too insistently, but it's the truth: somewhere between Ethan sliding onto the barstool beside him and the cab ride home Norman found he was actually just… having a good time. "But I might be, whether it's intended or not. Hard to turn off, you know? Nothin' personal."

Ethan smiles wryly, throwing him a sideways glance. The kind of look that makes you do stupid things if you're not careful. "Well, I hope you like what you see, at least."

"I liked it the first time."

_Yeah, like that._

 

* * *

 

Miles and months go by. His visits are sporadic at first; once he's not benched anymore, he dives into his work with renewed zeal because he thinks it'll be a good distraction and because now he's got something to prove. ARI is a nagging shadow always in the corner of his vision, a horrible sucking void under his bed at night, an itch inside his skull that he just can't get at no matter how hard he claws for it—and the casework piles up, tedious and riddled with hiccups that shouldn't exist, stalling out for days. No Origami Killers to be found; no, these are fucking softball cases, cases that should be straightforward but aren't, because without ARI he just feels like he's fumbling around in the goddamn dark.

Kicking the tripto had been comically fucking easy by comparison.

Worse still, losing ARI yanked the veil straight off how alone he is. By his third casual outing with Ethan Mars in mid-March he's pretty much forced to cop to the fact that the favor he promised Grace has morphed into something else entirely—something he's doing for himself as much as Ethan. Maybe more.

_Probably more._

He could laugh at how long it takes him to recognize this something else for what it is: it's friendship. It's fucking friendship.

And it's not just Ethan, either. Shaun leads a discussion about the Aztecs and Incas at the nearby Dairy Queen one balmy Friday evening in early April, soft serve dropping off his overlong spoon and through the round red chainlink of the table, onto Ethan's shoe. Same thing at the beginning of May, only Shaun's telling him everything he thought about _The Giver_ and it's the dining room table instead, and when Ethan's foot bumps up against his ankle he holds his gaze just long enough to get Norman overthinking. There's a stretch toward the end of the school year where Shaun's there more often than he isn't, and before long Norman finds he's honestly gotten kind of attached to the peaceful rhythm of the Mars family's hard-earned life.

Rain's pissing down when he crosses the state line into Maryland.

 

* * *

 

There's a sword overhead—and the day it falls down and he fucks up has always been a question of when and how, not if. Eventuality; not probability.

He's underslept and overworked, too late getting out of DC to stop and eat anything on the way, and what was supposed to be a relaxed evening filled with craft beers and bracing ambiguity kicks off with a shower of blood. Rust-colored leaves snap at his skin, leaving little nicks all over, and he's no longer in Ethan's kitchen, and he smells wood and iron and autumn decay and he can't breathe, he can't think, and he doesn't remember the moment he hits the floor, just Ethan's warning shout piercing through the maelstrom.

First thing he sees after it's over is the wad of paper towels Ethan's holding against his nose; the second thing he sees is the naked, gutting fear written all over Ethan's face. Thank Christ Shaun's not here to see this.

This isn't fair. Norman knows that. Not to Ethan, not to Shaun, not to Grace.

Norman shuts his eyes against the throbbing pain behind them and swallows some more blood. Ethan has tucked himself under his right arm and is leading him by the waist to the closest edge of the sofa, and by this time it's pretty much tapered off to nothing. The unfortunate flip side is this means Norman's got nothing else to tend to when Ethan drags the nearby ottoman to the rug's edge, pushes a glass of water into his steepled fingers, and sits down close to look him straight in the face.

It's a lot like the first time they got acquainted, really.

"Are you gonna tell me what the fuck just happened?"

"It's not a big deal. Not anymore."

He feels like a cracked egg that went bad a long time ago, broken open and held together by only a thin membrane, totally revolting inside. You toss those. They'll make you sick if you don't.

Ethan's not pleased with his answer, mouth a tight line. "Well, what if it happens again? Isn't there anything we can do? To help?"

_'We.'_

_Fuckin'_  'we.'

"What is it that keeps makin' you think I'm worth fighting for, Ethan," he groans back, so beaten down it isn't even a question.

"You fought for Shaun, didn't you? You—" Sometimes Norman forgets that Ethan's not afraid to play dirty if he believes he has to. He gets quieter. Norman can't really seem to meet his eyes. "You… fought for me, didn't you?"

The water glass shivers in his hands like a basin set into the earth. He takes a deep drink and then chooses to set it down.

"Yeah. I did."

He doesn't remember allowing their knees to touch. There’s a new ache in his ribcage, one that's not from before. "And I'd do it again, too. In a heartbeat."

Norman relinquishes a heavy sigh. He rubs at the bridge of his nose where his frames used to sit. His fingers knit in the small, restive space between their bodies.

"It's hard to describe."

And then he talks. Talks and talks, his best attempt at the whole rancid truth of it running out and over, everything he's allowed to say without losing his job and a couple years of his life to prison.

"It's like… It's like you're missin' a limb."

Ethan arches a brow. With a wince, Norman's eyes cut to what remains of Ethan's finger.

"Sorry."

The fucking phone rings.

Ethan starts as though yanked from a reverie and clambers toward the yodeling goddamn handset. Shaun's on the other end, because who else would it be? Norman's _Guernica_ of a life smooths and narrows the closer he drives toward Pennsylvania, its distortions and grotesquerie slowly resolving to discrete solid forms, grounded, unafraid. Norman can only look on as it happens in real time, a spectator to the way Ethan moves to squeeze between the couch arm and his arm in preparation for a story, warmth emanating from him like a star.

"Yeah, well—oh. Yeah, he's here," Ethan says, eyes flicking over just in time to watch Norman's heart leap into his throat. "Wanna say hi?"

Forced upright, Norman makes one final swipe over his bloody nose—then raises a halting, tentative hand for the phone.

"Hey, Shaun."

He fought for this. Didn't he?

 

* * *

 

Ethan's paying for gas inside Philly's least contemporary convenience store when Shaun's eyes meet his in the mirror. Norman quirks a smile in his direction, polite, but still not entirely sure what to talk about when Ethan’s not there to moderate.

"Hey... can I ask you something?"

"Sure," Norman says, because how awkward can it be? "Shoot."

"You've done a lot of cases like mine. You said before. Like serial killers and that kind of stuff. Right?"

"Yeah, that's true," he replies, through growing unease. Shaun's tone is low but cautiously, incisively inquisitive. Poking around for the right information, like Grace.

"Did you ever catch any of them alive?"

Usually by this time victims and their families are not much more than retreating points against the horizon in Norman's rear-view mirror, distant, not staring back at him with tired and curious eyes. This part? Norman doesn't usually deal with this part. Norman's brand of psychology never was particularly suited to helping the survivors; better to leave that to the real experts in his once-sprawling web of professionals, the trauma specialists and the grief counselors and the shrinks that he can no longer access with a simple wave of his hand.

"Depends on a lot of things," is the response Norman decides on. Factual. "Once they're caught, plenty of 'em will go without a fight. Others..."

And he knows Shaun can fill in the blank just fine.

 

* * *

 

Here's how Norman imagines things went for Ethan tonight:

Ethan toys with _not_ telling Norman for almost the entire day, but then, while he's watching the ten o'clock news by himself after saying his good nights, his hand grazes the outside of his knee in just such a way that reminds him of Norman's hand grazing the outside of his knee two weekends before—and by then the message is already taking shape under his fingers, something electric twisting and turning in his belly as he presses SEND.

> _just the two of us this weekend. sleepover._

Ethan spends no time at all crafting this intro and a lot of time thinking about it directly after, wondering if he shouldn't clarify. Ethan has a tendency to second-guess himself on a near constant basis, like the couple of times he's thought about just openly asking Norman what he thinks is going on here. Ethan wants to be honest. It's just the kind of guy he is.

And right as Ethan starts to wonder if he's made a huge mistake or if Norman's just sleeping (he isn't), his phone buzzes an inviting tickle through the meat of his thigh. 

> _Could be up there by about 6 Friday. Dinner?_

And poor Shaun, if he comes out of his room, he's probably going to witness his dad grinning like a jackass at his phone for reasons he is in no way willing or ready to try to explain. Ethan takes a pull off his beer to stifle it and his many thoughts. Ethan's got a formidable imagination.

> _definitely, we could go downtown again if you feel like it_

His fingers continue to hover even after it's sent. He swallows. Takes a little breath and doesn't notice when he's holding it.

> _or we could stay in_

Several agonizing seconds elapse in silence. His phone vibrates.

> _Sure, sounds good._
> 
> _which one, out or in_

> _Think I'm gonna let you guess on that one._
> 
> _do i win anything if i'm right?_

> _Oh yeah. A real big prize._

And that's Norman just being laconic, it has to be, dry drawl apparent even over text, but while he's having a chuckle about it he still finds that one hand settles, incorrigible, over the front of his jeans. Wondering, maybe— _wondering, maybe,_ if Norman could be lying in his bed a hundred miles away doing the same. Even if he's deeply unsure about _what_ this is, whatever you call this thing they've got going on, Ethan hasn't lost his ability to consider what he'd like for it to be. In spite of being stomped into the dust more than once Ethan's hope is somehow still alive in there, hot like an ember, like a seed, split open and ripe, poking, slow, rude, poking through the earth.

Because Ethan, he's curious, he’s got those fucking beautiful eyes and he's gotta get into his bedroom, into his bed, into his boxers. Ethan's desire making him bold. Ethan's eyes fluttering closed, dark blotting out the mirages in the room, and there's nothing, it's blessed nothing else, just prickling heat and breathing and, oh, dying to see what he's missing, wanting it with his whole body, and Ethan taking him by the hair and finding out is the last clear image Norman sees before shuddering out a noisy climax into his pillow.

 

* * *

 

Ethan's slightly better practiced but Norman is tall, so their friendly game of HORSE is really… not so much a game as it is a polite massacre, and by the end of a truly tragic rematch it's the middle of the afternoon. It's Thursday. Just so happens Norman's free.

He somehow made it to thirty-five two days ago. He hasn't said anything about it yet. His plan is to wait long enough that he can avoid catching an earful for not saying something sooner.

The day is overcast but very warm, the type that makes the air settle on your skin like a film. Ethan's building is in sight, the fronds of a potted plant just barely discernible through one of his windows; silently, Norman resolves that he's gonna call dibs on the shower the second they get back. To the victor. It's only fair.

"Hey, Mars." Ethan's already shooting him a look because he knows exactly what he's going to say, but it's too late to stop it. "Remember that time I dunked on you four times in a row? Feels like yesterday."

 _"Listen,_ " Ethan replies peevishly.

The basketball beats lazily at Ethan's side, intermittent.

"And anyway, are you really gonna lord it over a guy whose usual opponent hasn't broken five feet? Try taking the high road, Norm."

Norman wipes a rivulet of water from his chin and twists the cap back onto the bottle, conceding: "All right, I see your point."

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches as Ethan tugs at the collar of his shirt in an attempt to fan himself. He offers up the bottle the way one hands off a baton, the modest remainder of its contents sloshing noisily.

"Here, take it."

Ethan takes it.

"Thanks."

They walk a few feet more in amicable silence.

"For your pride," Norman says pleasantly. Ethan checks him off the sidewalk.

The central air blows a chill down his sweaty back. Norman secures dibs on the shower with impunity, but not before he peels off his shirt in the middle of the living room just to watch Ethan try not to stare. After he's out he sets to foraging for clean clothes in a bag of stuff he left here a couple of weeks ago, which is followed in turn by foraging in the fridge for something easy with which to pass the time.

When Ethan reappears, it is with damp hair and a puff of fragrant clean sweetness like fresh laundry and the last tugs of a worn-soft heather gray t-shirt over his stomach. Norman's mind forcefully presents to him the looping sense memory of Ethan's hands making firm contact with his ribcage not an hour earlier; he takes a centering breath and pushes off the island, hoping to follow Ethan out of the narrow kitchenette and onward to new distractions. Or old ones. Or any.

Except that's not Ethan's plan. Seems he's worked up a curious thirst since he last hydrated, or _something,_ so what ends up unfolding instead is this brief but awkward comedy of proprioceptive errors, a sad tango of mutual obstruction and false starts and almost-collisions that comes to an abrupt end when Ethan takes him delicately above the elbows and holds him still.

Confused and kind of annoyed about it, Norman looks him up and down with impatience and says, "Where are you going."

"I was gonna kiss you," Ethan says miserably.

"Oh." So looks like that’s the zenith of his higher reasoning, which is helpful to know. Ethan allots enough time for one or both of them to chicken out before he closes the distance and actually _does it,_ and Norman kisses back—first without feeling much of anything, really, then subsequently feeling a hell of a lot of things at the same time: surprise, relief, vindication. Vindication that he's been right about Ethan all this time, that once Ethan's gotten himself past the threshold of his own fright, uncertainty makes him brave. How he kisses slow and soft, without a shred of hesitation, like a man who's gone without for too long and now he _hungers,_ all of this crashing on him all at once in a wave, and Norman has to find purchase on the countertop again so Ethan doesn't find out his head is swimming.

 _This could be the single least responsible thing to come out of my entire fuckin' career,_ he thinks. _Shoulda seen it coming from a mile away._

Ethan turns that look on him again, that _fucking_ look that makes him feel like someone's crushing his heart in their hand, and he feels his lungs lock.

_Didn't I go looking in the first place?_

It'd be really nice if at least one of his fucking organs would cooperate.

_Guess one of 'em is, though._

Norman is not sure if this sensation is giddiness or just him hating the betrayal of his own body, excitement and dread tussling hotly in his gut. Like reality is folding itself across time, Norman suddenly remembers this one summer in Springfield when he was a kid creeping in a roller coaster car toward the summit of the scaffolds, and how his brain must've lit up like chain lightning with the novelty and the thrill and the _fear_.

"You smell so good," Ethan mumbles into his neck, bewildered. "Oh my god, I've been thinking about this so much."

Norman huffs out a laugh, maybe a little crazily, and bares his throat a little more. "Yeah—yeah, me—look, do you wanna get out of the kitchen for this, or...?"

"I dunno. What's ' _this'?_ " says Ethan in a voice that Norman has sure as shit never heard out of him before, like he may not actually know the correct answer but he knows the one he wants.

"Get your pants off, Mars. Before I lose interest."

"You wouldn't do _that._ "

Ethan's cheeky challenge buzzes against his earlobe and suddenly there's a slip of cool fingers at his hips, just underneath the waist of his pants.

" _No,_ " he moans into Ethan's mouth, real embarrassingly, because there's no way he could.

"Fuck," says Ethan.

"Shit," says Ethan, after another second.

"Why're you stopping?" says Norman, frustrated until he follows Ethan's gaze to the microwave clock, which shocks him back to a brutal green reality where it's ten past time to pick Shaun up from school.

"Goddammit," says Norman.

Ethan clears his throat a little and adjusts in a way he probably thinks is subtle; Norman watches as the flush in his face surges, then recedes.

"I'm sorry," he sighs. "Bad timing."

 _I'll say,_ Norman thinks, but what he says instead is "Hey. Don't worry about it."

Genuinely, he does not expect it when Ethan swoops forward one more time to crowd him against the counter and pulls him in by his fucking belt loops.

"Stay, though." Ethan's nothing if not adept at improvising under fire. Already he's got something percolating—it's written right there on his face just like all his most passionate ideas. "Tonight. You could stay for dinner. And..."

_Ethan, well, well. Get a load of you._

"And...?"

"Well, I bet Shaun's gonna want to tell you everything there is to know about the solar system… my guess it could take a while. So, say it gets a little late. Too late to drive anywhere."

Norman scoffs. "What, another sleepover?"

He doesn't really mean anything by it. It still has the unintended effect of taking some wind out of Ethan's sails; it gets him to take a step back, putting a couple reluctant inches between them.

"I mean, if you want—if that's not too..."

Doesn't really matter in the end; Ethan's got the gravity to pull Norman right along with him. Norman chuckles at his gallantry and decides to throw him a save. "Nope, no—it's as good a plan as I can think of. You, on the other hand... you _may_ be more devious than I thought."

He'd like to pretend. Used to be he was good at it too, but not here. He'd like to put up _any_ kind of fight, maintain any sort of graceful pretense that he doesn't feel like wrestling Ethan's zipper down with his teeth. But Ethan quirks a sweet, smug little smile and his nose bumps lightly against his, and he's just…

"Maybe I am."

Norman's fucked. Not as much as he'd like to be, but incredibly fucked just the same.

 

* * *

 

"You saw when Scott Shelby was killed, right?"

Holy shit.

Thing is, Norman sees little utility in being dishonest. He's a real smart kid, Shaun, a perceptive kid, with his mother's frankness and his dad's courage and way more insight than either of them probably give him credit for.

"Yeah, I was there."

A beat passes where the conversation just kind of dangles, Norman eventually speculating that he was supposed to follow up with details and really, really not wanting to. Luckily—or not so luckily—Shaun is the first to break the stalemate.

"I know you shouldn't want someone to be dead. But..."

He can see Ethan in the store window coming to the front of a once considerable queue. At the realization that Shaun is choosing to confide something in him that he thinks he shouldn't, he hesitates. But he also gets it, knowing what Shaun's probably being told at his sessions and by his parents. Everything he says comes out quiet and testing, like you would if you spent too much of your time trying to protect the adults in your life despite their protests to the contrary.

"Well," Norman says after steeling his nerves, glancing down and back at the cup holder. "Facts are, most times in situations like these you don't really get a choice. You might wish you could look 'em in the eye and say—whatever you need to say. I suppose. Sometimes, though, maybe it's better for a piece of shit like that to just be _gone._ Sometimes it's just knowing that the world's better off without somebody."

Shaun struggles with hiding a smirk for a second, mollified by the open profanity, but quickly he sinks back into thought as he picks at a fraying hole in the knee of his pants.

"Should or shouldn't has nothin' to do with it." Norman suddenly insists, unaware he wasn't done. "There's no right way to be, Shaun, and there's no—no _wrong_ way to feel about it, either. Don't ever let anybody tell you any different."

"Dr. Kim says it's normal to be angry."

"She's right."

Shaun doesn't respond to that for a minute, eyes downcast. Norman hears him pull a crunchy scrap of dead leaf off his shoelace. The noise it makes scrapes against the inside of his skull.

"I'm glad he's dead," Shaun says finally, lowly. "I hope it hurt."

"Yeah. Me too."

Inside, Ethan's stuffing his wallet back in his pants and heading for the door.

"Hey, Norman." Behind him, Shaun's voice is soft but bright. "Did you know the Earth isn't really a sphere?"

Ethan hops back into the driver's seat, a small plastic bag of goodies rustling as he plops it onto the console. "All right! What'd I miss?"

Norman smiles just a little and regards Shaun in the mirror.

"I did not know that," he lies.

 

* * *

 

That night Norman lies on the couch with eyes wide open in the dark, listening: to the hiss of the bathroom sink; to Shaun's small voice meandering through his twilit thoughts, fuzzy with sleep; the tiny tick of a light switch; the door clicking shut. Floorboards complaining about being walked on. Then, finally, a safe several minutes of nothing at all. Around a quarter past eleven, he sinks bare feet silently into the plush rug and begins to creep behind the sofa bracketed with two end tables, into the expectant dark of Ethan's place. Ethan. Christ. Ethan goddamn Mars is waiting for him just beyond the gauntlet of the hallway, and as he sidesteps a spot in the hardwood he knows to be creaky he glances up, squinting, and makes out the meaningful crack in Ethan's door.

Norman's stomach does a little flip. Shit, he's actually a little _nervous._

It's dim in Ethan's room but not pitch black, street level nightlife light infiltrating the space through the slats of the blinds. The sultriness of the day has given way to an impertinent squall, sporadic fat drops just beginning to pelt the windows, invisible flecks of detritus gusting high enough to rap faintly against the glass. Even if it's drowned out for the most part by the bedside fan, Norman's approach sounds accusingly loud in his own ears. He knows Ethan is awake. He's aware of it like a current in the air.

The bedclothes rustle, springs croak faintly under his added weight as he steps over his discarded sweatpants, and Ethan's silhouette undulates across the mattress to give him more room.

"Hey," he breathes, once he's settled, and immediately there's an eager palm on his side, fingertips playing over the furrows between each rib.

Ethan's down to just a pair of boxer briefs that hide nothing, and in spite of his obvious nerves his dick makes it abundantly clear that it's still on board.

"Hey."

Norman is unaccustomed to the kind of slow Ethan wants to give him. But since he's—probably?—significantly more accustomed to everything else that's about to happen, he quashes his restlessness and follows along with Ethan's inquiring touches. Unhurried, wholehearted. He tugs on Ethan's earlobe with a flash of teeth and enjoys his shiver.

"I've never, um," Ethan half-whispers, as if on cue. "I'm not—I mean, that I know of—I don't _think_ I've ever been... gay, I guess. But..."

Norman has to laugh a little at that. Partly it's tickled out of him when Ethan skates over a sensitive place on his abdomen, but mostly it's just because, well… there's something about it that's a little bit sweet. Norman knows all about the psychology of sex even if he's too titanic a goddamn mess to put it into practice most of the time—and he knows a lot about Ethan, too, like how good a chance it is that he can be counted on to make this concurrently more and less complicated than it needs to be. "Anyone ever talk about your timing?"

Ethan demurrs, shifts onto his elbow. "I know. I know, you're right, it's a bad time to bring it up, I just—"

A nervous chuckle. Norman spends about a half-second wondering whether this might end real awkward, but then Ethan's nose is bumping apologetically into his temple.

"Look, I'm not saying I get _why_ , but you're... really... It's just. You, you just— _do_ something to me."

For a guy who married his high school sweetheart it must be a singularly confusing admission.

"Well, y'know... at the risk of stealin' your thunder. You do something to me, too."

Ethan's got the nerve to sort of huff in reply, as though that's somehow hard to believe. Like it's not visible from orbit. Irrespective of his baser instincts, Norman can't really do much to rush things—Ethan is drafting for himself a new concept in his mind's eye, steeper angles and shallower curves, muscles in bas-relief beneath the skin, ilium sharp but cotton-covered cock weighty and warm next to his. Greedy palms slide up Norman's torso and stutter over his chest for a second, expecting to feel something different, but he rubs his thumb over one of Norman's nipples anyhow and Norman pushes against him crudely. A noise catches in Ethan's throat; his voice falters.

"Let's—get these off."

Ethan beats him to his waistband so he goes for Ethan's instead. He's got Ethan's shorts halfway off his ass when the heel of a hand drags firm over his dick, testing, _squeezing,_ then reaches straight the fuck in and just takes it. Norman's incapable of not looking down, riveted, and when bangs brush his forehead he sees that Ethan's looking too, and _fuck_ the impressed little sound he makes at his own fingers around Norman's cock.

Yeah, let's, Norman tries to say. It comes out sounding like "Mmmffuck."

Something shifts audibly in the adjacent room and just like that Ethan becomes an absolute statue, listening fiercely for any sign that Shaun could emerge from his room and find Norman not at all where he left him. Norman's cock throbs indifferently in Ethan's grip, his own hand still around the fistful of underwear he's managed to tug down Ethan's thigh.

It's quiet.

It's quiet.

Still quiet.

At last Ethan relaxes under his fingers and grins conspiratorially in the low light, pleased with the gambit. Against Norman's pink cheekbone, he whisperlaughs: "Sshhhh."

"Mhm," he hums back, scuffing his nose under the scruff of Ethan's jaw and following it up with a gentle scrape of teeth. It's a promise. No, correction: it's malicious compliance.

The obtrusive undergarment gets thrown over Norman's head somewhere as he crawls down the length of Ethan's body, a meandering line of open-mouthed almost-kisses searching for the best places to make him twitch. Beyond that there's no real fanfare before Norman swallows him down because he already knows this is gonna be good, and he's correct: Ethan _groans,_ the effort of keeping it low so close to anguish that Norman _almost_ suffers a twist of pity, arousal knotted so tight in his belly he feels it beating with his pulse. A couple seconds pass and Ethan's raising the dimmer on his lamp, just a little, wanting to watch.

It requires a bit of adjustment in the beginning, but the truth is that you never really forget. One could say it's a lot like riding a bike in that way, provided one is a real smart aleck in the first place. Ethan has no such luxury, head thumping back on the pillows, uttering a low _Jesus._ He's so beautifully responsive, all fraying breath and no idea where to put his hands—they clench fitfully in the pillowcase and at the edge of the bed, pluck at the back of his shirt—and he's trying _so_ hard to keep his hips moving in line with Norman's tempo. Flush with bravado, Norman decides that Ethan oughta live a little: he nestles down deep onto Ethan's cock and stays there, sloppy wet rhythm never quite letting him out of his throat, wanting him to thrust, _choking_ for it, damp-lashed, raw and full.

 _"Fuck,_ " Ethan rasps, a broken shudder of a word, rapt.

Eventually it gets too hard to keep it up. He pulls off with a filthy slurp, gulping air; Ethan's three good fingertips graze his cheekbone, careful, attentive.

"You all right?"

And maybe a little intrigued.

"Uh-huh," Norman replies, blushing with pleasure, voice thick and sure. "How 'bout you?"

"Yeah," says Ethan, sounding dazed, breathless. He swallows audibly, working on recovering a few more words in his vocabulary. "Um, it's been a while."

_Careful not to make it too much, too fast. He hasn't been touched like this in years, I'm guessing._

The soft catch of Ethan's fingers in his hair snaps him back into his own head, and for a second he just kind of allows Ethan to pet him, chastened by the intimacy of it, and lets his cheek just rest against the warm damp length of his hard-on.

_But that's not all there is to it. Huh, Ethan?_

Ethan stumbled into his life a victim. Then he was a lead. Maybe even a suspect, for a very short while. Then a deep but nebulous responsibility. Different configurations, each occupying a unique space in Norman's reality but all united in folly—because he did notice. He did. It's been his job to notice. So he went about noticing Ethan without assigning him any particular significance, without stopping to observe _himself_ observing the gentle and uneasy lift of Ethan's smile, or his unanticipated depths of grit; his incontrovertible virtue; his sad, pretty eyes. And now Norman sees that in his negligence he played himself entirely, _exhaustively,_ and there's never been a single moment where he wasn't hopeless in the face of Ethan Mars and his enormous, bleeding, beautiful heart.

The noise Ethan makes while he's coming is strangled and lovely, a pained, _grateful_ little thing that makes Norman sink against his belly and moan in kind through a stopped-up throat.

Thunder rolls over the city. Norman coughs away a salty itch. Above him he hears Ethan's worn-out chuckle, the gradual slowing of his breath.

"Wow."

"That's one way to put it." A water glass sits in its habitual place on the nightstand. He climbs over Ethan's body to get to it, which reminds everyone he's hard enough to cut diamonds.

"All right, it's your turn," Ethan says, watching him swallow, stroking his flank. When Norman peers down, eyebrow raised, Ethan gives him an opportunistic peck.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"'Cause you don't have to, y'know, if—"

"I know I don't _have_ to. Roll over. On your back."

"Yes, _sir,_ " Norman breathes, aiming for smart but landing on sluttish.

And then he just gets to watch for a while, fascinated, as Ethan gets up close and personal with his first dick. It's hard to tell if he's got misgivings or not. For a minute or so he's just touching him, slow focused strokes, and then finally he lowers a warm, delicate kiss to the underside that makes Norman's mouth go dry. He strokes up and over the tip with a curious tongue, tasting salt. He's got an artist's eye for detail, Ethan does, and just as before, he's coming at this like he's trying to memorize every last feature.

Ethan, lowered lashes dark fans on his cheeks, lapping over the head, finally closes his mouth around the cock in his grip with a small happy sound from deep in his chest.

_Jesus fucking Christ._

Ethan doesn't suck it like a pro by any stretch of the imagination, but there's this goddamn _sincerity_ behind it that has Norman reaching for passages out of the DSM and the dates his bills are due just so he doesn't lose it, embarrass himself like a fucking teenager. There's a trace of tensed focus around Ethan's closed eyes but the rest of him is relaxed and loose, like he's enjoying himself, and the ruddy glow across his cheeks has begun to touch his ears. It's a little endearing, maybe, and Norman doesn't even try to resist tracing the outer shell of one with an affectionate thumb, fingers combing through hair just beginning to be shot with gray.

Ethan is way, _way_ better at this than he rightfully oughta be. Norman hears the slick sounds of Ethan working his prick, hot mouth on his balls, and all his thoughts and preoccupations keep dying half-formed on the vine, and he's almost there, batting at Ethan's shoulders in warning because he's rapidly losing control over everything that isn't trying to fuck Ethan's smirking bastard mouth and he's almost there, and he's almost _there._

"Shit, close, close—"

Ethan, goddamn him, he just hums in reply—a muffled, smug refusal—and when Norman recognizes the reciprocity he's witnessing, Ethan trying to make him come in his mouth, that's it. That's all she wrote for him. Norman comes _hard,_ Ethan sucking him off until it feels like he's been hollowed out, until he's sensitive and sore and it's almost too much but still he kinda likes it; until he gasps and tries to thrash away, feet tangled in the covers, palms pushing at Ethan's shoulders to get him away before he starts making noise that Shaun definitely won't sleep through.

"Haaah—okay, _okay,_ fuck, fu—"

Ethan lets him go too soon and not soon enough. Norman can see his lips are kiss-dark and upturned slightly, shining where they catch the low light, sheepish but hopeful.

"Sorry. Too much?"

Norman lets out a breathless sound that might be a laugh, only aware his thighs are trembling when Ethan gives one of them a bristly kiss. "What the shit. I was tryin' to go easy on you."

It's met with a small shrug.

"I'm just paying attention," Ethan says softly.

 _What does that mean? Jesus Christ, what does that_ mean?

 

* * *

 

Ethan fucks like he means it.

 

* * *

 

Ethan is pinned into his seat by the weight of Norman's feet in his lap, rapidly slowing down on a box of Thai takeaway. Once he's given up on it for good a hand falls to rest semi-permanently on Norman's ankle, and occasionally his fingers will wander, absent, to the line of demarcation between sock and skin.

"So Grace has Shaun tomorrow too?" Somewhat to his surprise, Norman realizes the question is a little disappointed.

"The whole weekend, visiting her parents up in Bethlehem. Family reunion, actually. With Paul," he adds after a pause, like he's swallowed something bad. "It's fine. Really. Shaun seems to like him well enough, and they seem to get along..."

Although Norman has just this _niggling_ sense that it's not actually as fine as Ethan would have him believe, he lets him air his petty grievances with no interruptions aside from the periodic affirmative hum into an oily box of pad thai. Norman's met Paul—he'd been there on Shaun's birthday, chiseled and blond and stubbornly likeable, while in the background Grace was scanning carefully over them both, Ethan and then Norman and then back to Ethan, with keen, appraising eyes.

That's not going to be an easy conversation by anyone's standards, but it's not Norman's to have. Hell, maybe Ethan would say it's not his either, and maybe that's just the way it is. And maybe that's fine.

"—but for what it's worth, Shaun _definitely_ prefers you."

Ethan cuts himself off too late. He goes extremely pink.

"Not, I mean—I'm not trying to say it's the same thing, I mean, I didn't, you know..."

Norman, probably, isn't laughing strictly at Ethan's expense. Not strictly. After all, it's laugh or have to do something to actually address the fact that the implication frazzles him beyond repair, and there _is_ an implication there. Whether Ethan sees it or not, there is an implication, a goliath fucking implication, and Norman honestly doesn't know how he _couldn't,_ but he's been wrong before.

There's an implication.

Norman does not have a name for this feeling. And it's not like he has all the facts. For that very reason, he's the picture of rational composure once he feels capable of replying, busily jabbing at a pulverized wedge of lime.

"Nah, stability's important," he says in a hoarse voice, "for a kid. Especially a kid like him."

"That's right… You're right." Some of the fortitude creeps back into Ethan's voice, but he's taken a real interest in the half-empty container of rice abandoned on the table.

"It's been a long time. Since I've been able to… give him that. Even before—"

Norman follows his gaze to where his right hand is encircling his left wrist, worrying the skin just beneath his incomplete pinky. It's the last week in September. It's beginning to rain. It's raining now, been raining for hours, will rain for days.

"...Even before.”

"I know," Norman replies, not just because it's true, but because he's the only one left besides Shaun who does.

_What does that mean?_

"And after a while, it got to the point where I just... couldn't spend another minute in that house, surrounded by Jason. His things, his—his _life,_ " He pulls in a deep breath to halt a deluge of feeling, sanding down the jagged edges of his voice with a swallow. "And—I couldn't do it. I _tried._ As long as I could, I tried not to let it take me away, but in the end..."

Norman nudges against the outside of Ethan's thigh, feels it firmly underfoot. "It's not the end, though, is it? He's still got you, Ethan. I know you—you won't let that change. The two of you, you're gonna be all right. Just keep doing what you're doing."

"Don't act like that doesn't involve you. You're… You have me. Norman. And I-I know you're here for us too, so..." The second time he says it, he's not afraid anymore. He peers toward Norman from the corner of his eye, tracing an idle framework over his shin. "That… hasn't changed either, right?"

Somewhere in his perception leaves have begun swirling, greedy, a skeletal tapping at the walls, a red devouring swarm hissing over the rain. He feels it pulling on his senses until they start to tremble, wanting to yield. Snap off and blow toward the sky. Wash into the gutters, away, out into the Potomac, out to the sea. Ethan's hand tightens around his ankle, like a tether, heavy and real and warm.

"Seems like the one thing that never did," Norman replies.

It's just the wind outside.

**Author's Note:**

> (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧


End file.
